Joe Torre has written a personal essay for CNN, chronicling his difficult uprbringing with an abusive father. The network has been airing a special series called The Human Factor, which profiles survivors who overcome life's toughest obstacles
"Throughout my career in baseball, I have been very fortunate to experience some outstanding moments on the field," he writes, "However I many fans might not know much about my experience off the field. I am the product of a domestically violent home. My father physically abused my mother, and he emotionally abused me and my siblings."
Joe Torre's father was a New York City police detective, and was revered within his community. But he was also physically abusive with his wife that left Joe and his siblings traumatized. He was silent about his experiences until going public in the mid-1990s in his autobiography, Chasing the Dream: My Lifelong Journey to the World Series. Torre continues to to educate children about the issue of domestic violence.
Torre and his wife Ali created the Joe Torre Safe At Home Foundation with its mission to educate "to end the cycle of domestic violence and save lives." Currently, the foundation has ten fully funded and operational facilities in New York City, Los Angeles, Westchester County and New Jersey.
"There's... a peer leadership program, which allows kids to be part of the process of finding ways and solutions to end abuse. We believe that, if youngsters understand that the way to treat people is the way that they, themselves, want to be treated -- that violence, control and verbal abuse is wrong -- we can change things," he wrote in the piece.
Torre, who is 72 years old, is a nine-time Major League Baseball All-Star, As manager, he is 5th all-time on total number of wins.
